Tings are collapsing in the final volume of The Book of Dust, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a world that manifests, here more than ever, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are failing, or restructuring themselves along new and disturbing lines. An unseen force "is wrecking the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "money's going bad, and no one knows why". Power is flowing away from governments, and pooling in the halls of religious leaders, the treasuries of corporations, the control of crowds. "Something is at work, silently, gradually", says merchant a merchant figure, keeping a observant eye on the ancient paths from his seat in an Aleppo cafe. "Things we thought were firm and strong are weakening and collapsing."
Core Enigma and Lyra's Journey
Just what that something might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that drives the concluding book, which continues where the previous book concluded. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the elaborately built, deeply captivating realm he first unveiled three decades past, with the publication of His Dark Materials. It's a world whose landscape corresponds to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans look and reason and behave like us, but are accompanied by daemons, beings in beast form; where the skies are teeming with witches and mythical beasts, but below, buses are taken and drinks is sipped, and older academics carry luxury shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first introduced to as a young girl in the His Dark Materials trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in La Belle Sauvage, the prequel with which the author began the series, is now a young woman: still distinctly the sharp and persistent protagonist of the prior volumes, but older, sadder, warier, more doubtful. This circumscription is amplified by her separation from her soul companion, Pantalaimon – but it was also, unexpectedly, the cause which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
His choice to go off in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he epitomises as her "creativity"), and her mission to rejoin with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across Europe and into the mountain region, meeting with wonder and peril on the way. But from the start, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the religious governing authority, and the author's deliciously chilling embodiment of strict, procedural wickedness – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – our protagonist's uncle, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the role of head of the authority's governing body, and is set on using his newfound authority to broaden the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to safety along a overflowing river as an child in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a additional duty in intelligence work: he is assigned to Geneva to discover more about his plans. And behind all of this is the enigma surrounding the scarce and valuable essential oil which appears in some way to be the cause of a social and financial upheaval rippling out from that area. The extract is seen by certain groups as a tradeable good, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual miracle, and by further factions – the extremist "mountain dwellers" – as a wellspring of malevolence; an challenge that must be eradicated. The issue of its origins, its significance, and if it should be destroyed or protected is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's actions, and her fate, are demonstrated to be inextricably entwined with the future of the realm
In the previous volume, these narratives ran largely in tandem. In The Rose Field, they converge. As in the first trilogy, Lyra's movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably woven with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her daemon and recover her imagination becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an oppressive government which, as these systems often attempt, is seeking to suppress autonomy of thought, creativity and expression: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Cosmic Openings and Moral Battles
The story begins with the finding of a set of strange cracks in the makeup of the Earth's air: gateways that appear to lead to different dimensions. A particular portal appears to be the source of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these openings as a threat to the religion's doctrine and sets out to eradicate them. As our protagonist begins to move from rigid reason and return to instinct, however, her conviction that these places must be protected – that their meaning and their value is somehow vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the field of roses, or whatever we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a poetic tussle between purity and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Character Development
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
